The night before the assault was cold enough to freeze regret itself.
Orion sat on the broken parapet of the northern watchtower, legs dangling over an abyss with no bottom. Violet lightning stitched the cloud ceiling in absolute silence, illuminating the endless drop in brief, merciless flashes.
Beside him, Aria produced two ration bricks—compressed shadow flesh fused with crystallized mana.
They tasted like nothing.
They tasted like everything he had lost.
She snapped one in half and handed him the larger piece without looking.
"Eat."
The Protocol said nothing about shared meals.
Orion took it.
Their fingers brushed—cold metal gauntlet against colder shadow skin.
They chewed in silence.
Below them, the Fracture Line yawned open—a canyon miles wide where the Abyss itself had split long ago. Tomorrow, the Winged Monarch would try to force an army through it.
They were the cork in the bottle.
Aria finally spoke.
"Do you dream, Orion?"
No master had ever asked him that.
Orion considered lying. Servants were not meant to dream.
"Sometimes," he said instead. "Fragments. Things that belonged to others."
She nodded as if that answer made perfect sense.
Then she reached up—
Click.
—and unclasped her mask.
The saint's face beneath was scarred in a perfect cross: one line over each eye, one down the bridge of her nose, one across her lips. Her skin was pale, almost translucent. Once, she must have been radiant.
Now the scars drank the lightning's glow like open wounds.
She watched him look.
"Ugly?" she asked.
"No," Orion said, surprised by his own voice. "Honest."
A faint curve touched the corner of her mouth. Not quite a smile.
"Tell me one of the fragments."
He hesitated.
These memories were his only because he had stolen them. Speaking them aloud felt like confession.
But she was waiting.
So he chose the softest one.
"A woman," Orion said quietly. "Master number forty-three. Archer-class. She used to sit on ridges like this and play a bone flute. The song had no name. She said it was for someone waiting on the other side of the war."
He closed his eyes. The melody still lived inside him, painfully clear.
"She died shielding a retreat. Arrow through the throat. Her last thought was that the song would never finish."
Silence stretched.
Aria's voice dropped to a whisper. "Play it."
"I don't have a flute."
"You have the memory."
She was right.
The skill had come with the fragment.
«Lament of the Unfinished Song»
Orion raised his hand.
Shadows coiled between his fingers, knitting themselves into the shape of carved bone. He brought it to his lips and blew.
A low, mournful note drifted out over the abyss.
It was not beautiful.
It was lonely.
It was the sound of every promise the Abyss had broken.
When the final note faded, even the wind seemed to hold its breath.
Aria's eyes were closed. A thin line of shadow ichor slipped from beneath one lid, tracing the scar.
"Thank you," she said.
Orion lowered the phantom flute. It dissolved into smoke.
"Some chains are meant to be broken," Aria said softly. "Others… you have to break yourself on them first."
Orion did not yet understand.
Dawn arrived without a sun.
The clouds merely brightened, sickly and wrong.
The Winged Monarch's assault began with song.
Thousands of Seraph throats opened at once.
A hymn of purification tore through the battlefield.
Shadow flesh blistered.
The northern flank—two hundred shadows against ten thousand—reeled beneath the opening note.
Aria stood at the trench's edge, wings of blackened feathers unfurling. Corrupted holy light coiled around her sword like smoke.
"Forward," she said.
Not shouted.
Said.
Orion stepped beside her.
Not behind.
The Protocol stirred, uneasy, but she had not yet ordered him to shield her.
He still had room to choose.
They advanced.
The battle was chaos stitched together with screams.
Seraph Knights dove in perfect formations, lances blazing. Soldier-class shadows shattered like glass. Orion swung Kargan's greataxe in wide, reckless arcs—
WHUM—! CRASH—!
—«Blood Rage» igniting in his veins.
Each kill fed him a sliver of stolen strength.
Aria fought like something sacred gone wrong.
Every strike of her sword left trails of black fire that devoured holy light. She carved a straight path toward the heart of the enemy push.
Others began to notice.
A nearby Warrior muttered, "That Servant's fighting like he's got a soul."
Another laughed nervously. "Don't let command hear that."
They kept moving.
Then the hymn changed pitch.
The clouds parted.
A single figure descended.
An Arch-Seraph.
Eight wings blazing white-gold. Armor seamless as porcelain. In its grasp—a greatsword of condensed radiance.
Its voice hurt to hear.
"Ariael the Unfallen. You were warned."
Aria froze.
The name was not Aria.
It was older.
"I fell the day you cast me out," she replied steadily. "Cassiel."
The Arch-Seraph raised its sword.
Light gathered—dense, terrible.
A nova meant to erase everything within a hundred paces.
Their entire flank would die.
Cassiel's gaze locked onto Aria. "Come quietly, traitor, and the lesser shadows may yet be spared."
Aria laughed.
It was not kind.
"Orion," she said calmly. "Stand beside me. We hold together."
The Protocol awakened fully.
VZZZT—!
Chains of violet runes ignited across Orion's chest, arms, throat. Pain like molten iron surged through him.
PROTOCOL LAW #1: The Servant exists to protect the Master.
PROTOCOL LAW #2: You must obey every direct order.
But her order was not to shield.
It was to stand beside.
The laws collided.
Orion's body lurched half a step forward, trying to throw itself in front of her. Light crawled across his skin as the System punished resistance.
He bit down until his teeth cracked.
Then Aria stepped sideways—
—placing herself between him and a lance aimed at his back.
No master had ever done that.
Something inside Orion shattered.
Not the Protocol.
The habit.
One hundred and thirteen deaths worth of obedience.
He planted his feet.
He did not block.
He raised the axe.
«Reckless Charge»
«Iron Skin»
«Blood Rage»
«Lament of the Unfinished Song»
—twisted now into a howl of defiance.
Orion charged.
Aria matched him stride for stride.
They hit the nova together.
BOOOOOOM—
Light devoured the world.
Sound vanished.
Then pain—pure, total.
Orion came to on his knees.
His left arm was gone below the elbow, dissolved into drifting smoke.
HP: 41 / 1800 — DROPPING
But they were alive.
The nova had broken against them like surf against stone.
Cassiel hovered above, wings torn, sword dimmed.
Behind them, what remained of the flank stared in stunned silence.
Aria was bleeding from a dozen wounds.
But she was standing.
She looked at Orion.
Truly looked.
"You didn't block," she said.
"No."
Her mouth curved—this time, unmistakably.
"Good."
Cassiel snarled and raised its sword again—
—but the hymn faltered.
The Ashen Legion had counter-pushed.
The assault was breaking.
"This is not over, Ariael," Cassiel thundered as it retreated skyward.
Then it was gone.
The battlefield quieted to dissolving corpses and distant thunder.
The flank had held.
Aria knelt beside Orion and tore a strip from her own cloak, binding the stump of his arm. Her hands were steady.
High command would have seen everything.
A Servant who fought as an equal.
A Servant who bent the most sacred law.
Dangerous.
She leaned closer.
"How many memories do you carry, Orion?"
Half-delirious, Orion whispered, "One hundred and fourteen."
Her face went still.
Horror.
Then resolve.
"Then you're the one I've been waiting for."
A cold notification flickered.
⊳ Protocol Violation Detected (Minor)
⊳ Penalty Deferred… Observing.
⊳ Hidden Achievement Unlocked: «First Step Toward Rebellion»
The chains did not break.
They stretched.
And something in the System was watching him now.
Orion met Aria's eyes.
For the first time in one hundred and fourteen lives, he asked a question of his own.
"Why me?"
She tied the knot tight.
"Because," she said, "you're the only one who remembers enough to end this."
Lightning split the sky.
The war was far from over.
But for the first time—
Orion no longer knew whose side he was truly on.